The Point Four-ward: Wait(ers) No More

Four points I’m thinking about the NBA and the Cleveland Cavaliers…

1.) Speaking purely from that place where we sports fans can still grow attached to players in purely sentimental ways, I will miss Dion Waiters very much. He was the first professional athlete I ever interviewed face-to-face and I’ll always be a sucker for his unique personality which always seemed to be running on those parallel tracks of inflated self-regard and never feeling properly regarded.

I was firmly in the camp that thought Waiters could experience a real break-through in his this season, his third. But I was also one of the people (along, apparently, with the crossed fingers of everyone else on the Cavs) who thought Waiters would be able to adapt to playing with LeBron James, becoming more of a catch-and-shoot player who could focus on being a stout defender with the starters and sate his appetite for dribble-driving against second units. That, it turned out, wasn’t Waiters game.

So, I thought he could be an offensive spark plug off the bench… and sometimes he was. But if his long-two jumper wasn’t falling, the positives that the team got from Waiters dropped off a cliff. I’d defended Waiters for his whole Cavs career, but even I found myself saying to a friend over the weekend, “This might just not be working [with Waiters].”

Then there’s this:

Cavs coach Blatt told Waiters he needed spot-up shooter. Waiters resisted. Believes he’s better than Kyrie, thought Kyrie “favored” by Cavs.

— Sam Amico (@SamAmicoFSO) January 6, 2015

No one is saying that Waiters is a bad guy. No one is saying he is incapable of bringing anything good to an NBA team. But, clearly, he was not at a place where he was ready to try to change his game to fit into the other pieces the team had already made a much more firm commitment to. So, GM David Griffin pulled off the trade that will see the J.R. Smith Cavaliers era begin as soon as tonight against the Rockets.

While I like Iman Shumpert more than Smith, his inclusion in the deal could solve what I always argued was the problem with flipping Waiters for a defensive big man, as many wanted. The Cavs now get their perimeter defender and keep their bench scorer.

Half of my mouth is salivating to see how this all plays out. The other is dry as a bone.

2.) What little front line depth the Cavs had before this trade is now officially gone. Sending Alex Kirk and Lou Amundson to the Knicks — New York is expected to waive both players — means that Brendan Haywood is the team’s de facto third (and only other) big man after starters Tristan Thompson and Kevin Love. In the immediate future (i.e. while the team’s injury list still flutters long behind the team like Superman’s cape), this means David Blatt may run Love a little at center and get Shawn Marion some minutes at power forward in order to spell Thompson who, having averaged over 39 minutes a game over the team’s last seven, is already getting worked about as hard as he can.

Given that, you’d expect the team to have some more moves on deck. They could choose to pursue a further New York state of mind by pursuing recently waived Knicks center Samuel Dalembert. The 6-11 center could saw the floor for 17 minutes a game for the Knicks and was having his worst statistical season in years. But, he was still averaging nearly 3 blocks per 36 minutes and fits two current Cavalier rationalizations to a tee: “But the Knicks were a mess…” and “He’s better than anyone else currently warming the end of the bench.”

Monday was also the first day that NBA teams could sign players to 10-day contracts. I’d love to see the team use its current state of flux to try out a couple of D-Leaguers and see if they can find some length and athleticism on the cheap. One player to keep an eye on is 6-9 Khem Birch. Currently playing for the Sioux Falls Skyforce, Birch is averaging 15.2 points, 10.7 rebounds and 2.4 blocks a game. He would also immediately fill the Cavs’ Canadian-big-man-from-UNLV position that has been vacant since they traded away Anthony Bennett.

3.) The big score for the Cavs in this trade (besides the five or six games Smith will just go nuts scoring the ball… hopefully) was getting Oklahoma City’s protected first round pick. The pick is protected 1-18 this year, 1-15 in 2016 and 2017 and, after that, becomes two second round picks. This year could actually be where that pick has the most value, as injuries to Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook have depressed the Thunder’s record a bit.

If Cavs GM David Griffin is able to flip this (or Memphis’ future pick that the Cavs own) for a big man of any impact, he’d have effectively traded Waiters, for three players all of whom fit the team’s biggest needs. That’s not a bad haul for an uneven (if beloved by some) former number four overall pick.

4.) So, where does this leave David Blatt’s much-maligned rotation? Once Shumpert recovers from his shoulder injury (and reports are that he should be ready soon), the Cavs’ immediate starting rotation would seem to include the fourth year guard from Georgia Tech, his 2011 draft classmates Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson, as well as James and Love. Smith will be the first guard off the bench and will see run with a second unit of Matthew Dellavedova, Shawn Marion, some combination of Mike Miller and Joe Harris, and Cavs-big-to-be-named-later.

If Blatt has had trouble finding consistent minutes for and production from Miller before this trade, though, it only gets tougher on the Cavs’ newly crowded perimeter.